Dread Your Eyes
by SSJ-Alhazred
Summary: Second in a trilogy. Finding someone to confide in, Josh gets one mother of a surprise. *mild slash*


Disc: I don't own Max Steel, I'm not profiting from this.

Picks up after "Dread the Morning." Yeah, s'got slash again. Nothing explicit.

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Dread Your Eyes

by Alhazred

madarab20@hotmail.com

No, don't do that. -Isambard Prince  
Why not! -Xev Bellringer  
You don't want to upset the balance. -Isambard Prince  
_ What_ balance? -Xev Bellringer  
_ Everything..._you can live a happy life, forever on Water! -Isambard Prince  
Until _you_ destroy it. -Xev Bellringer  
Well I...never will! Unless you upset the balance... -Isambard Prince  
---from Lexx #3.14 - "Heaven and Hell"

'Don't tell, don't tell, don't even think about telling' had become my new inner mantra. Too late, though. I'd thought about it.

It was a bad idea. I should've just been thankful no one else knew and acted like nothing was wrong.

I _hate_ it when I just can't do that. Damn emotions, who needs 'em?

Berto first, I thought. People usually wait until later to see him at the computers, morning's pretty quiet there. God, _that's _a scary thought, this going around as a rumor. Anyway, Berto's less likely to freak out. Or at least, most likely to freak out _less_ then anyone else.

At least Berto was having a normal morning, going through his usual routine on the systems. He heard me walk in and whirled his chair around _fast,_ almost like I'd startled him. "Josh! We missed you yesterday... feeling better?"

Yep, I'd chickened out, called Dad and told him I was sick after Dread left. Actually, I _had_ been sick, if you can call dry heaving a few over the night before sick. "Yep, wasn't anything major," I told him. Hey, it was true! _Physically_ I wasn't that bad off.

He looked at me funny for a second. Maybe my voice wavered, maybe my body language was off, I don't know, but considering what he said, he noticed _something _was off. "Something wrong, Hermano?"

Moment of truth, I guess. And I was gonna get it over with. I figured, the sooner, the better. 'You live a thousand deaths by fearing one,' right? I swallowed hard, looked at my hands and cracked my knuckles to be distracted for just one more second. "I... yeah, something's wrong, Bro. I... did something."

"Night before last?" He asked me. Looking back, that should've set all kinds of bells and whistles off in my head, but I wasn't exactly thinking straight.

"Yeah, that was it," I looked over his head and stared at the wall. "I... I kinda..."

"I know," he blurted out.

I don't think I could've added two plus two after that sunk in. He _couldn't_ have known, he must've meant something else, must've figured it out wrong or something. There was no way we were talking about the same thing. Not a chance in Hell. But... I hadn't done anything _else_ that night...

"You know what?" I said, or tried to say, I don't think much sound got out.

"You," he started, biting his lip. "Y'know, you n'Dread."

How? _How?!_ I wanted to scream. My voice, on the other hand, was somewhere in China.

"I was pulling an all-nighter here," he added. At least I didn't have to actually _ask._ "And..."

He wanted to finish that sentence about as much as **I** wanted him to. I knew what he was getting at, it hit me like a ton of bricks, and I didn't need to hear it. I don't know if I should've been was more embarrassed or more horrified.

The Biolink must've been on; he'd _watched._

I remember breaking into a cold sweat and sliding down the console I was leaning against. Berto told me later the color had gone from me in three seconds flat and I was muttering "oh my God" under my breath a few times... I don't quite remember that part very well.

Somewhere around there, he yelled my name and crouched down next to me. The next moment of clarity I had was Berto waving his hand and snapping fingers in front of my face a couple of times. I snapped out of it, I wonder if I would've gone totally catatonic for awhile without him there.

For all the good it did. I just stared at him and swallowed hard. When I finally said something, it couldn't possibly have been a more stupid question. "You were watching?"

"I... yeah... yeah, I was," he answered.

"How could you?" I asked him. For that brief second, I was pissed. Not that it sounded like it, considering how close I was to hyperventilating. How _could_ he? What the Hell gave him the right to invade my privacy like that? How dare he...

"I... I was gonna turn the damn thing off, you know? Then when you looked at him and I saw... I couldn't. I couldn't _believe_ it, but... first I thought he'd knocked you out and taken you somewhere..."

How dare he care, eh? _Raped_ by Dread? Now that was a new idea. Not a particularly inviting one either.

"Yeah, it was pretty obvious that wasn't the case after a minute, Hermano, but I still thought... I thought..."

"Yeah, so did I," I finished for him. "It never left my mind." No, Dread hadn't harmed a hair on my head. When he wasn't pulling it, that is, but I'm not getting into that.

"Why him, Josh?"

Uh oh. I knew he'd ask that, but I suddenly thought it might be a deeper question Actually, I was just being stupid. "You're not... asking 'why him and not me," are you?"

His eyebrows shot up, he shook his head, laughed, rubbed his eyes underneath his glasses and said something along the lines of "una imagen que disturba a la vez, Hermano."

I stared at him, and he shrugged. "Sorry. No, I'm not asking that. Why _him,_ Josh? He's their leader, for Christ's sake."

Oh, he was asking for it. I couldn't resist. "What, you'd rather watch me sleep with Psycho?"

We both laughed, kind of. I know **I** felt better after that. At the very least, it was good to know I was still sane. If you could call that sane.

"Why _any_ of them," he finally asked.

"I don't know. It just... it didn't matter. We were both there, it happened." That's when the tears came, hearing myself say how simple it all was.

Berto didn't say a word, thankfully. He scooted over, put an arm around my shoulders, and let me cry for a few minutes, and I needed that.

"Funny how he wanted Josh," I finally said. "Not Max. You'd think he'd want Max."

"Huh? Why?" He asked.

It seemed obvious to me. It _always _seemed obvious to me, funny, how it could barely put it into words, how I wanted to be Max when I was myself to the point of considering him... _it_ as someone else. "Why not? Max is... better, I guess."

"Hey, look at me, Hermano."

I did. I never noticed Berto being more serious then he was right there. "Don't you _dare_ go schizophrenic on us, you got that? I swear, if you even _think_ like that again I'll rip the Max Probes out so fast you won't have _time_ to die."

"Yeah, yeah, I got it," I nodded. I realized I'd needed someone to tell me _that_ for a long time. "So."

"So. I deleted the record from the archive... no one's going to know unless you want them to."

"That's not very encouraging, Bro," I answered.

"I dunno what to say," he was serious again, "Seems as though you're truly sailing into the unknown, Hermano. I'm not a doctor of psychiatry. You should probably _see_ one."

"No, no I don't think I need to," I stood up. "So I got laid. You know... I think I can deal with that."

"Good. Just don't deal with it by getting John Dread in bed anymore, okay?"

"I can do that too, Bro. I can do that too."

~fin~

Una imagen que disturba a la vez, Hermano. - One disturbing image at a time, Bro.

For those curious about the opening quotes - the balance Prince is talking about is the balance between Heaven and Hell. When Xev uses the Lexx to destroy the planet Fire (Hell,) she upsets the balance. Prince (the devil) is freed from his bondage, takes control of the Lexx and uses it to destroy the planet Water (Heaven,) thus, restoring balance.

Oh, and Maxy Steel: thank you a thousand times over for the real review with honest-to-god feedback. The fact that someone actually said more then two words almost blew my mind.

The ref list:

The line "It seems as though we are truly sailing into the unknown" is from Star Trek: Nemesis.


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